China has enough policy tools to keep the economy stable despite "deep rooted" structural problems and downward pressure, Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday, channeling calm amid concerns about the country's slowdown.

An obscure corner of the US IPO market is getting a new lease on life as more Wall Street banks and institutional investors turn to blank-check acquisition vehicles, once the domain of only a few underwriters and hedge funds, for better fortunes.

Consumer confidence in Germany is beginning to feel the heat from global economic risks, a poll found on Thursday. "Optimism among German consumers faded somewhat in March," market research company GfK said in a statement.

MOBARAK Musa, a mobile telephone salesman from Syria, has spent 10 years working in Saudi Arabia, sending part of his wages back home to support his parents and three brothers. A shift in Saudi labour policy means he won't be able to do so for much longer.

New Zealand's Fonterra -- the world's largest dairy cooperative -- announced a 123 percent rise in interim profit on Wednesday but warned its farmers faced "unprecedented pressure" amid a slump in global milk prices.

Zimbabwe on Wednesday gave foreign businesses until April 1 to comply with controversial equity laws that compel them to cede majority stakes to locals or risk closure.

The US government will give Chinese telecom equipment and smartphone maker ZTE Corp a three-month reprieve on tough export restrictions it imposed this month, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday.

An estimated three out of four jobs globally are dependent on water, meaning that shortages and lack of access are likely to limit economic growth in the coming decades, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The biggest obstacle to women receiving equal wages is the sorting of the sexes into different jobs and industries, while differences in education, age and experience account for only a small portion of the gender pay gap, according to new research.

A deal among some Opec producers and Russia to freeze production is perhaps "meaningless" as Saudi Arabia is the only country with the ability to increase output, a senior executive from the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday.

Advertising agency Mediacom has become a certified Google Partner that has four indexes: display, search, video and analytics.

INDIA has defended its right to grant licences allowing local firms to override patents and make cheaper copies of drugs discovered by big Western drugmakers, and said reports to the contrary were "factually incorrect".

Nearly two-thirds of Britain's 350 biggest listed companies have failed to reach a target of having 25 percent of female board members, and four-fifths have two or fewer women on their boards, an inquiry into gender diversity said on Wednesday.

Nearly a decade after the iPhone broke the mould for mobile phones the question being asked is whether the evolution of the smartphone has finally come to an end, as even Apple now treats older, smaller 4-inch screens as something new.

France's central bank chief Francois Villeroy de Galhau said Monday that contested economy-boosting measures by the European Cental Bank had produced "tangible results", including tens of thousands of French jobs.

Leaving the European Union could cause a "serious shock" to Britain's economy, with the risk of losing almost one million jobs, according to a CBI business group study released Sunday.

Egypt said on Sunday that Saudi Arabia has offered $1.5 billion to help finance economic projects in the Sinai Peninsula, as Riyadh continues to bolster its ties with Cairo.

CONFRONTED with a plunge in its stock markets last year, China's central bank swiftly reached out to the US Federal Reserve, asking it to share its play book for dealing with Wall Street's "Black Monday" crash of 1987.

Singapore's DBS Group Holdings is seen leading the race to buy British bank Barclays' Hong Kong and Singapore private wealth units, valued at as much as $300 million, sources with knowledge of the situation said on Monday.

THE US government plans to temporarily lift export curbs it imposed on Chinese telecom equipment and smartphone maker ZTE Corp for alleged Iran sanctions violations, a senior Department of Commerce official said.